Salt, Salmon and Smoke Part 1

Very early one winter's morning 451 went to film Ole Hansen, the urban salmon smoker. We wanted to find out about his life as an artisan and to talk to him about why his salmon tastes so special.

In the late 1800s, Lyder-Nilsen was a salmon fisherman in Kirkenes, a small town in the Norwegian county of Finnmark, 240 miles north of the Arctic Circle. His smoked salmon was a great local success. Four generations later, Ole Hansen built a replica of his great-grandfather’s smokehouse in an old printing works in Stoke Newington in London.

Our first impressions were that this was a lifestyle with a distinct pattern and rhythm. Ole gets up at the same time every morning and goes through the same process but it is far from boring. This is real, meaningful and tactile work. The process is the point – it’s about touch and sight and taste and the knowledge gained from doing something over and over again.